In response to Anonymous from France’s December
30, 2023 comments:
If South Korea (SK) experiences
great difficulties developing its own submarine reactors SK money may make France
more willing to supply K22 or K15 reactor technology:
- a changing
reactor tech proliferation environment, led by the US and UK’s AUKUS reactor offers
to Australia, has probably weakened the Western world's reactor proliferation taboo.
- again SK
and even Japan may be willing to offer high prices, making French naval reactor
technology a highly profitable defence export item.
This may initially be for SK and Japanese SSBN (rather than SSN) reactors
- such reactors need not be as miniaturised and operate on gradual acceleration
and deceleration compared to SSN reactors. Their SSBNs may be bastion protected if in the near seas. Bastion protection
may compensate for the more extended time for SK and Japan to develop more difficult
SSN technology.
Your claim may well be accurate that the LEU K22
is probably very similar to the civilian NUWARD SMR proposed by Électricité de France (EDF) .
- Yes SK, with its Small Modular Reactor (SMR) designs for the KEPCO BANDI-60 (60 MWe) PWR and KAERI SMART (100MWe) PWR, might eventually develop an efficient submarine reactor.
Equally Japan’s JAERI MRX (30-100MWe)
PWR may result in a submarine reactor. Also Japan’s operation of the Mutsu 36MWth nuclear powered civilian ship has given
Japan some propulsion experience.
However SK or Japanese adoption of French, US or UK reactor tech could minimize extended indigenous development times and cost. This is why the UK pressed for a US S5W reactor installed in HMS Dreadnought (S101) in the early 1960s. Subsequently some US S9G reactor tech has reportedly gone into the UK’s latest reactor, the PWR3.
Hi Pete
ReplyDeletefrom the French "commentator"
My statement about the K22 and Nuward closeness is probably wrong and needs to be nuanced (after poring thru the Nuward commercial brochure). Sorry if this post is long and "exotic" for non tecnhical people (1st § and last sentence sufficient in that case)
It is clear that SMR developments, allow a more economical and faster development of sub reactors by funding and advancing talents/teams/facilities, in the area of novel reactors design and all related area '(metallurgy, chemistry , fabrication, testing ,systems control safety..).This is of tremendous importance as it may take 10/15 years to build such infra even in a developped country, even when key talents are "imported"
However SMR ,for economical reasons relies on commercial ,(competitive international multivendors )LEU fuels rods assemblies,( 40 years of learning curve/experience in PWR ) ,typically 4 to 5 m tall(this is clearly indicated in the Nuward data), just using much less..Because the rods are vertical for safety reason, the reactors needs a 9 to 10 meters vertical space. The LEU loading of these assemblis would lead also to a typical 2 years frequency of refueling
This is why the rod and tube reactors relies on more entiched U and show the typical bulge on sub or very large boats.This is ok for a ballistic launching sub due to the size of the rockets (but still needing more enriched U to expand life time)
For attack subs compacity is a key advantage (agility,draft, crew size , cost..) .In the French case you have very compact reactors (Cas 48 in the 2500 T Rubis class)because it use a platetype "heat exchanger" with fuel plates lateral movment according to technical published data.The fuel is still LEU but with a much higher surface loading to ensure the 10 year refueling schedule.(Allowed fluxes are higher in plates exchangers ,"à la Alfa Laval",usually.)
Nothing is published , that I am aware,about the K22 design but as an engineer with some modest exposure to civilian N , yeras ago,I would estimate/best guess that in order to incease power by 50% vs K15 to reach K22, the surfaces ,to keep the flux identical (thermal , neutrons)indentical, would have to be incresed by 50% which would translate in a 20/25 % size increase.Lots of technical issues , because that the way machine design behave.., but hardly a revolution more an extrapolation/limited scale up